Various Artists - Rodney On The ROQ Vol. 2
17 minutes ago
Sunday, 24 July 2011
Richard Nixon's 'war on drugs' began 40 years ago, and the battle is still raging
Four decades ago, on 17 July 1971, President Richard Nixon declared what has come to be called the "war on drugs". Nixon told Congress that drug addiction had "assumed the dimensions of a national emergency", and asked Capitol Hill for an initial $84m (£52m) for "emergency measures".
Drug abuse, said the president, was "public enemy number one".
But as reported the following morning in our sister newspaper, the Guardian, the president's initiative appears to have been primarily motivated not by considerations of the ghettoes or Woodstock festival, but by addiction among soldiers fighting in Vietnam: the first and immediate measure in the "war on drugs", implemented 40 years ago this weekend, was the institution of urine testing for all US troops in Indochina. The Guardian's "sidebar" story to the news bulletin was not from Chicago or Los Angeles but the Mekong Delta, with soldiers laughing: "You can go anywhere, ask anyone, they'll get it for you. It won't take but a few seconds."
Nixon signed his war on drugs into law on 28 January 1972, Adam Raphael quoting him in this newspaper as saying: "I am convinced that the only way to fight this menace is by attacking it on many fronts." The catchphrase "war on drugs" mimicked that of Nixon's predecessor Lyndon B Johnson, who had declared a "war on poverty" during his state of the union address in 1964.
Four decades on, in a world (and an America) accursed by poverty and drugs, there is almost universal agreement that the war on drugs has failed as thoroughly as that on poverty. In the US and Europe, the war has been fought on the streets, in the courts and through the jail system, to no apparent avail. In the world that has "developed" since 1971, it has been fought in the barrios; it has defoliated land and driven peasants into even worse poverty. The war in the so-called "producing" countries has ravaged Colombia, is currently tearing Mexico apart, and again threatens Afghanistan, Central America, Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela. In places such as west Africa, the war is creating "narco states" that have become effective puppets of the mafia cartels the war has spawned.
The drugs themselves have wrought misery and havoc across the planet, and continue to do so. According to the United Nations, in an exhaustive report by a global commission on drugs published this summer, worldwide opiate consumption increased by 34.5% between in the two decades to 2009, and that of cocaine by 25%. The UN estimates the drug business to be the third biggest in the world after oil and arms, worth £198bn a year. The former head of its office on drugs and crime, Antonio Maria Costa, posits that the laundered profits of the narco-trafficking underworld by the "legitimate" financial sector is what kept the banks afloat for years before they finally crashed in 2008...
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Ed Vuillamy @'The Guardian'
ketilbstensrud Ketil B. Stensrud
BREAKING (TRANSLATED QUOTES FROM OSLO TERRORIST JUST IN): Anders Behring Breivik (32) was executing youths on (cont) http://tl.gd/bu2bfp
GreatDismal William Gibson
Liking Orwell really a lot is curiously little guarantee that one is not crazier than a sack full of assholes.
What did the Oslo killer want?
...and that might explain why Stormfront's website was locked down so quickly yesterday!
UnfitToPrint Unfit To Print
right wing mindset: white fundamentalist christian terrorist => represents himself. fundamentalist Arab terrorist => represents ALL Muslims.
abumuqawama Andrew Exum
Let me just clear some things up: I am responsible for neither the death of Amy Winehouse nor that Iranian scientist.
Anders Behring Breivik | 2083 A European Declaration of Independence | Manifesto
E-Book PDF: Open in New Window | Download (7.7MB)
Via
Due to the heavy traffic at Kevin's site I have taken the liberty of mirroring the PDF
Get it HERE
As Blake Hounshell points out no one could have put this together in 24 hours and do follow his twitter feed for an analysis of the document.
Via
RIP Amy Winehouse
Singer Amy Winehouse, 27, has been found dead at her north London home.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed that a 27-year-old woman had died in Camden and that the cause of death was as yet unexplained.
London Ambulance Service said it had been called to the flat at 1554 BST and sent two vehicles but the woman died.
The troubled singer had a long battle with drink and drugs which overshadowed her recent musical career. She pulled out of a comeback tour last month.
via
Saturday, 23 July 2011
Respect
Oslo Mayor Stang asked whether Oslo needs greater security -
"I don't think security can solve problems. We need to teach greater respect"
I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right
The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it was easy to refute this line of reasoning because it was obvious, particularly in Britain, that it was the trade unions that were holding people back. Bad jobs were protected and good ones could not be created. “Industrial action” did not mean producing goods and services that people wanted to buy, it meant going on strike. The most visible form of worker oppression was picketing. The most important thing about Arthur Scargill’s disastrous miners’ strike was that he always refused to hold a ballot on it.
A key symptom of popular disillusionment with the Left was the moment, in the late 1970s, when the circulation of Rupert Murdoch’s Thatcher-supporting Sun overtook that of the ever-Labour Daily Mirror. Working people wanted to throw off the chains that Karl Marx had claimed were shackling them – and join the bourgeoisie which he hated. Their analysis of their situation was essentially correct. The increasing prosperity and freedom of the ensuing 20 years proved them right.
But as we have surveyed the Murdoch scandal of the past fortnight, few could deny that it has revealed how an international company has bullied and bought its way to control of party leaderships, police forces and regulatory processes. David Cameron, escaping skilfully from the tight corner into which he had got himself, admitted as much. Mr Murdoch himself, like a tired old Godfather, told the House of Commons media committee on Tuesday that he was so often courted by prime ministers that he wished they would leave him alone...
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Charles Moore @'The Telegraph'
iankatz1000 ian katz
@tom_watson Did you know that NoW had hired detective to follow you at 2009 conference? Know any other MPs who were followed?
tom_watson tom_watson
@iankatz1000 Not until the BBC told me yesterday evening. No ideas about others.
Police chiefs issue warning over PMMA drug
A highly-toxic class-A drug is being sold in Scotland, according to senior police officers.
ParaMethoxyMethylAmphetamine (PMMA) has been found in tablets which look like ecstasy.The substance has also been found in drugs being sold as "legal highs" in Scotland.
The Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland said it had recovered quantities of PMMA after a series of raids.
It has been produced in pink tablets with a Rolex crown logo, and in white tablets with a four-leaf clover logo.
PMMA has also been recovered in powder form and police said it may also be present in other products and tablets.
Det Insp Tommy Crombie, of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, said: "PMMA is a stimulant similar to ecstasy but it is not as potent.
"Users... may be tempted to take more tablets to achieve the desired effect, increasing the risk of a potentially fatal overdose.
"I would strongly advise drug users to avoid such products and follow harm reduction advice where necessary."
@'BBC'
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